


Get Some

by WonderBoy



Series: Get Some [5]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Established Relationship, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Friends With Benefits, Friendship, Friendship is beautiful, Getting Together, Lance is a drama queen, M/M, Mutual Pining, Pining, but its okay because i love him
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-16
Updated: 2018-12-19
Packaged: 2019-05-07 17:45:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 18,909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14676222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WonderBoy/pseuds/WonderBoy
Summary: A long silence stretches between them as Keith realizes what he said and Pidge stares at him, clearly fighting between sadistic enjoyment and complete befuddlement by his constant disaster status.“Holy fuck, Keith,” she finally says.He covers his face, groaning. “I know.”“Holy shit.”“I know.”“You seriously need to get it together and bone him. For all our sakes.”He drops his hand to glare at her, deadpan. “I’ve definitely already ‘boned’ him before. That’s what got me into this mess-”She holds up her hand. “I meant, with your heart. You need to bone him with your heart. Metaphorically.”





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Because my goal was to make these as close to stand-alone as possible, but as a reader I still like context, if you haven't read "Unfair," Keith gives Lance a blowjob in the kitchen, and it starts their FWB relationship. "Obvious" has no explicit content, but Lance gives Keith a bunch of hickeys. "Secret Keepers" involves, as the title suggests, the boys keeping secrets and there is also no explicit content. "Picture Perfect" involves a hookup with some...tasteful nudes? And both boys have way more feelings invested in this fwb relationship then they're letting on.
> 
> ~
> 
> Finally! What we've all been waiting for! The two of them getting their shit together and admitting there are way more feelings involved in this ridiculous arrangement! Except...you know...I've gotta put 'em through the wringer first. Because unfortunately for us all that's just the kind of person I am.
> 
> I have a...slightly more than vague idea of where this is going, but not how long it will be (thought I'm planning-hoping-for not more than like 5-6 chapters?) but this series started as an exercise writing smut that was never supposed to be anything more than a one shot so...
> 
> There is an OC I threw in here for the drama of it all (〃￣ω￣〃)ゞ He's essentially a human version of a minor alien oc in my other Voltron work, throwing kisses from the sky, but you don't need to know that story or his role there for this, but if you were curious about him, that is his origin haha.
> 
> Anyways, I hope you all enjoy! I'm definitely looking forward to this journey, and the eventual resolution, and I hope you guys can have as much fun watching them get there as I've had planning it so far!

_Don't pretend, don't pretend, don't pretend like we're lovers_  
_Like it's more than two strangers underneath the covers_  
_..._  
_I don't, I don't need no candlelight_  
_You just need to fuck me right_  
_Guess I ain't the loving kind_  
_I just wanna get some_  
_I don't, I don't wanna wait no more_  
_We can do it on the kitchen floor_  
_Give me what I'm beggin' for_  
_I just wanna get some_

_-Get Some, Ghosted_

* * *

 

Lance’s foot lands on-top of Keith’s textbook, successfully interrupting his reading. Again.

“Lance,” Keith says slowly, trying his best not to lose his temper.

The socked foot in front of him wiggles. Marilyn Monroe’s stitched signature look dances in front of Keith from the bottom of Lance’s foot. “Just admit they’re cool and we can move on.”

Keith looks to Hunk and Pidge across the table. Pidge is blatantly ignoring his suffering with headphones in. Hunk pretends to be ignoring them in favor of his homework, but Keith can see how he glances up every few seconds.

“Hunk, please control him.” Keith pleads.

Hunk winces at getting caught. “Sorry, Keith. He’s not going to drop it until you agree with him.”

Finally, Keith looks to his tormentor. Lance sends a cheeky grin the minute Keith meets his eye. “C’mon, Mullet. You know you like them.”

“Put your shoes on.” Keith says instead of agreeing or disagreeing, pulling his textbook out from under Lance’s foot. He nods towards a sign hung on the door. “Can’t you read? ‘No shirt, no shoes, no service.’”

Lance brings his sickly sweet frappuccino to his lips to take a sip. “They already served me.” He wiggles his foot again.

Keith looks to the ceiling and counts to five. “Lance, I refuse to rate the ‘coolness’ of your ‘Mon-toe’ socks so put your foot down.”

Surprisingly, a moment later Lance does just that, with a harsh yank that shakes the whole table. They all turn to Lance, to see what could have possibly inspired that easy surrender, but he isn’t paying them any mind. His eyes follow something in the distance with an expression Keith can’t interpret.

Turning around, he searches for what has caught Lance’s attention. There’s a small line at the front counter of the coffee shop but nothing out of the ordinary. Keith doesn’t recognize anyone in line, like a professor, that would have startled Lance. None of the workers are paying their table any mind, so he wasn’t in trouble for waving his foot around.

“Is that…?” Hunk starts, but before he can finish his question Lance is rocketing out of his chair, leaving it to fall behind him with a noisy clatter. Other patrons turn to see what the commotion is.

Keith doesn’t react fast enough to stop him, so he can only watch as Lance sprints across the shop and launches himself at one of the customers in line. For a surprise attack, the man takes it in stride, only stumbling slightly as he accommodates the sudden addition and turning to face his attacker with a fierce glare. The moment he registers who is at his side, however, the man’s entire expression shifts into something incredibly soft and he engulfs Lance in an embrace that dwarves him.

Keith turns back around for an answer. Hunk is watching Lance and the stranger with a surprised, but fond, smile, and even Pidge has removed her headphones to pay attention now.

“Who is that?” He asks, looking between the two. Pidge turns to Hunk as well.

“Baldur.” Hunk says as if that explains everything. 

                                                                                

Keith looks to Pidge and she starts to shake her head. “I have no-wait. _Baldur_? Like…from your freshman year?”

Keith often found himself wishing he had befriended the trio years ago. He had always thought he was okay on his own, until he had people to spend time with and rely on and realized how much he had missed out on. He’d never had someone to share his obscure interests with before Pidge, or someone like Hunk who was there with a friendly ear to bend and a stubborn streak when Keith was being reckless who Keith didn’t have to worry was only sticking around out of family obligation. And…well he wasn’t sure exactly what his relationship with Lance was these days, but he couldn’t imagine his life without him anymore.

Right now, however, it would have been nice to know them before, _just_ so he could stop feeling so damn clueless.

The other two at the table proving to be useless, he turns back to Lance.

Lance who is looking up at the stranger, “Bladur,” like he had hung the moon. Lance who currently has Baldur cradling his face in his hands while Baldur whispers softly to him. The customer who had been behind Baldur moves around the two to take his order, and neither seem remotely concerned about the spectacle they’re making.

Something dark and ugly twists in Keith’s chest and he looks away. He tries to focus on his reading again, but he can’t stop seeing the way Lance looked at the man.

“Baldur was Lance’s first boyfriend.” Pidge finally says, taking pity on Keith, or perhaps on the textbook he is currently trying to set fire to with only his glare. “I never met him, they broke up before I came out here, but apparently they were pretty serious.”

“Why did they break up then? That doesn’t really look like the way to greet an _ex_.” Keith wants desperately for his voice to stay level, like he has absolutely no stock in if Lance has remaining feelings for this apparent ex, but Pidge’s knowing look tells him all he needs to know about that failed attempt.

“Baldur enlisted while we were still in high school. His first tour started just after we started freshman year.” Hunk finally joins the conversation again, tearing his eyes away from the couple. “They agreed they didn’t want to do the long-distance thing, and Baldur didn’t want Lance waiting at home always worried about hearing the worst while he was overseas, so it was a mutual ending. But they were really in love, high school sweethearts, you know? Before Baldur enlisted, Lance thought he might’ve married him.”

Keith feels suddenly nauseous.

“Really? I never heard that part.” Pidge says in surprise, and there is very little that surprises Pidge, so Keith feels ever-so-slightly better about not knowing any of that either.

“Well, to be honest, I was never sure how…good of an idea that would’ve been. We were so young and Baldur came after Nyma…” Hunk explains, and just like that it explains everything.

Keith might not have heard any details about Lance’s first boyfriend, other than that he had one, but after a disaster last year involving her reappearance in his life and recreational substances Lance had not, to Keith’s knowledge, previously used, he knew far too many intimate details about exactly how Lance’s high school girlfriend fucked him over.

“So…Baldur was a rebound?” Pidge asks, but she doesn’t sound very convinced.

Hunk looks decidedly uncomfortable with the turn in the conversation, but he’s saved from having to answer by Lance returning to the table, Baldur in tow.

The dark, twisted feeling in his chest makes way for a sadistic kind of enjoyment at watching Lance squirm under the hand resting casually at his hip. He doesn’t meet his eye, but Keith knows the small jump wasn’t from surprise at Baldur’s hand on him, but the reminder of the collection of hickeys Keith had left two nights ago. The tips of his ears are pink as he carefully shifts so that Baldur’s hand rests just a little higher.

“Guys,” Lance says carefully not looking at Keith. “This is Baldur.”  He nudges Baldur softly, gesturing to each of them as he says, “I’m sure you remember Hunk, but this is Pidge, and…Keith.”

Baldur nods hello to each of them as he goes, and Hunk and Pidge respond with a wave. Keith stares, wondering what the hell it meant that Lance paused so long before his introduction, while simultaneously telling himself to _stop_ wondering about it.

“Hello all,” Baldur says, a soft, but posh, accent coloring the simply greeting.

Keith has to wonder who or what he pissed off in a past life to make Lance’s ex-boyfriend tall, dark, handsome, _and_ British.

Hunk, clearly the only one of their foursome raised into a functioning adult, stands, offering Baldur his chair and getting a second one for himself. Baldur takes it graciously, with a thank you and an apology for the trouble, while Lance drops into his previously-vacated seat. He sheepishly attempts to shove his foot back into his abandoned shoe without making it obvious that he had darted across the coffee shop and into his ex’s arms with only one shoe on.

Keith very maturely kicks the shoe out of his reach.

He takes a sip of his coffee, deliberately ignoring the glare Lance sends his way. He thought he had sent it to Pidge, but a moment later Baldur glances under the table. He bends down, straightening up again brandishing Lance’s discarded tennis shoe.

“…Lance, why are you only wearing one shoe?”

Pidge snorts, choking on her own drink. Hunk shakes his head, hiding his face in his hands.

“Um I…was…my shoe…um,” Lance stumbles over his words, looking for an excuse while also kicking Keith under the table. It might have hurt more if he was actually wearing a shoe.

Baldur tilts his head, staring at Lance as if trying to understand the fragmented nonsense he was muttering, before his expression brightens. “Are you still wearing novelty socks?”

Keith bites his tongue.

Two grown men should not be able to make a conversation about novelty socks sound so damn exciting. He stubbornly ignores them, going back to his textbook, even as Lance’s voice distracts him from absorbing any of the content in front of him. He wasn’t even aware “novelty socks” were a thing Lance had a vested interest in before last week when he commented on a pair of Pidge’s alien-patterned socks. But, sure, somehow an ex-boyfriend who hasn’t been in his life for at least three years remembers this minor interest and sparks a substantial conversation.

When he glances up for the umpteenth time, Pidge meets his eye across the table and arches a brow.

He isn’t sure how she got so good at reading him, so fast, but he suddenly longs for the time before he was friends with these fools.  

Not really.

But for a moment, the feeling is definitely there.

“So, Baldur, what are you doing over here?” Hunk asks when the sock enthusiasts finally begin to lose some steam in their ramblings. “Not that it’s not great to see you again, but I didn’t think you had family over here.”

Baldur turns to him with an easy smile, and Keith wonders exactly how close the three of them were before they parted ways for college and the military.

“Oh no, I don’t, I’m actually here for-” A rapid beeping cuts him off before he can answer, and he apologizes with a small grimace, pulling a cell out of his pocket. “I’m so sorry, but I didn’t realize the time, I actually have to get going…” he says reading something on the screen before pocketing the phone once again. He looks around the table for a moment, his apologetic expression turning to one of awkward embarrassment. Keith hates how charming of a look it still manages to be. “I never actually ordered my drinks, did I?”

Lance covers his face. “Oh my God, that’s my bad, I’m so sorry,”

Baldur waves him off with a small laugh. “That’s alright, I’ll just have to stretch the truth about how busy the shop was.” He leans over, pressing a kiss to Lance’s cheek before he stands, shaking Hunk’s hand across the table and waving to Keith and Pidge. “It was nice seeing you all, Lance, Hunk we’ll definitely have to catch up before I ship out again.”

They agree, and even after all this time, Keith isn’t sure if Hunk’s enthusiasm is genuine or he’s just the kind of person that makes everything sound pleasant and exciting. The table watches him return to the line.

Silence falls over the table as Lance finally puts his shoe back on and Hunk returns to his homework. Pidge continues watching Keith across the table, even as she puts her headphones back on.

“ _Stop_.” He mouths.

She grins, but finally looks away. She mouths something silently to her notebook, and it could be the lyrics to whatever she’s listening to, but Keith has a sneaking suspicion its whatever she would be saying to him if they were alone.

Keith finally relaxes enough to get back to his own reading, but he only gets through another paragraph before he sees Lance’s attention shift again.

He watches Lance watch Baldur carry a cup-carrier, full of four different styled drinks, across the shop. They wave to each other as Baldur exits the shop, and Keith has to force himself not to make a rude face when Baldur catches his eye as the door swings shut.

Lance turns back to the table, grabbing his own drink and taking another sip. He meets Keith’s eye with a haughty look.

“ _He_ thinks my ‘Mon-toe’ socks are cool.”

Keith throws a pen at him.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Holy shit, you guys, your reaction to this fic was un.real. I knew people were looking forward to seeing a resolution to the series, but I was wholly unprepared for how ready. Thank you so much for all your support! It made my /month/. 
> 
> I apologize for the long wait on this chapter, despite being done with the semester, I ended up being surprisingly busy this month (and then when I finally had some time, my friend got me into Monster Prom, like I needed another distraction) but I hope you enjoy this chapter! It's a little bittersweet, but I had a lot of fun writing it <3

Lance realizes Keith is onto him the third time he looks up.

Keith was always strangely aware of his surroundings, particularly of when he was being watched. And Lance had, grudgingly, come to realize he had a bad habit of watching Keith. A lot.

The first time Keith looked up from his book to meet Lance’s gaze, he smiled at him, assuming Lance had once again just let his mind wander, and went back to his reading. The casual domesticity of the moment, and the clear indication of just how much more comfortable Keith had become with Lance’s attention, sent something strange spiraling through his stomach, only upsetting it more.

The second time he looked up, he lifted a brow, silently asking if Lance needed something.

Help? Clearly. Perhaps even a therapist. Did they come full-time, on-call? Because Lance clearly needed _a lot_ of extra care.

Regardless, it was nothing Keith could supply in the moment so Lance simply shook his head and went back to pretending to do his homework.

The third time he gets caught watching Keith, Keith shuts his book when he looks up. Which means this is serious business. He’s left his finger inside, marking his page, which Lance realizes means he might still be able to get out of this confrontation. But he isn’t feeling particularly hopeful when Keith also turns to fully face him.

They’re on Lance’s bed. Lance leans against the headboard, with notes from his last lecture open on his lap. Keith had been sitting at his feet, leaning against the wall, to read, but his new position has him dangling one leg off the side of the bed, while his bent knee rests between Lance’s feet. The door is ajar, and now to his back, a dangerous position considering Lance’s roommates still don’t know about Keith’s guilty pleasure of romance novels, like the one sitting in his lap now, but he risks not seeing someone opening the door to focus on Lance.

Yeah, he’s totally caught.

“Are you having problem with the homework?” Keith asks.

“…No,” It’s not technically a lie. This week’s class was a review over one of the few equations and patterns in engineering that had always made sense to Lance. In fact, it was a little too easy right now. Which is what made it so easy to get distracted.

Keith shuts his book fully, officially making this Serious Business.

Shit.

“Then what the hell is your problem?”

Lance plasters on his best smile, batting his eyes and leaning into Keith’s personal space. “Maybe I just like looking at your pretty face.” Also, technically not a lie.

Keith shoves him out of his face. There’s a warm flush to his cheeks and the tips of his ears, which is unfairly adorable, per usual, but he doesn’t let it distract him.

“Lance, stop being a pain and just tell me what it is.”

Lance sits back and reaches for the book Keith abandoned. Keith grudgingly lets him.

The black and white cover depicts a sensually embracing couple. Clearly, Keith has stopped bothering to only bring the subtler books with him when he visits. Lance flips the book over, but the only color on the whole book is from half of the pink, cursive title as it fades into blocky, black letters. Probably supposed to be something symbolic about the difference between the two leads or something equally as cheesy.

“What’s this one about?” Lance asks instead of answering.

Silences stretched between them without either saying anything, but when Lance flips the book around once more to read the back, Keith takes it from him.

“Childhood friends,” he says shortly.

Lance arches a brow. “That is definitely not how I spent my childhood.”

Keith whacks him in the arm half-heartedly with the book. “Childhood friends reuniting _after_ college, jackass. Are you going to tell me what’s wrong now?”

Something about Keith’s explanation feels wrong, but Lance didn’t read enough of the book to argue with him…and technically he got an explanation.

Lance can feel his heart hammering in his chest and he’s glad Keith can’t hear it. He wants to press a hand to his chest, as if it would somehow slow the rapid pounding, but he knows it won’t, and it will only make Keith worry more.

Dark eyes bore into him, waiting for Lance’s answer.

Lance wants to kiss him.

“Can I ask you for a favor?” he finally asks.

Keith closes his eyes and exhales slowly. Lance knows mentally Keith is counting to ten and then back to one. Lance sometimes wonders if it would help him to do the same.

“That’s what this is about? Why did you make such a big deal?”

“You don’t know what the favor is yet.” Lance warns. “Don’t act like it’s nothing until you have all the facts.”

Keith rolls his eyes, readjusting on the bed to lean against the wall once again. His hanging foot kicks lazily against the mattress as he waits for Lance to ask.

Lance takes a deep breath, carefully taking in the comfortable image Keith makes in his room. If it’s the last thing he sees before Keith murders him for this, at least it will be a nice memory to leave with.

“So, I ran into Baldur again,” he starts slowly. If he wasn’t watching Keith as carefully as he was, he probably wouldn’t have noticed the way he slowly freezes up at the mention of Lance’s ex. He isn’t sure what to make of the strange behavior, but something tells him it doesn’t bode well for him. “He came into the restaurant while I was working yesterday, just by coincidence,”

Keith makes a strangled noise in his throat, like he didn’t really believe it was a coincidence, but doesn’t stop him from continuing.

Lance takes another deep breath. “AndIguesshesortofassumedsomethingwhenheranintoustheotherday-butlongstoryshortIsortofpanickedanddidntcorrecthimwhenhethoughtyouweremyboyfriendsowillyougoonadoubledatewithme?”

Keith stares at him without reacting for so long Lance waves a hand in front of his face, making sure he’s still alive.

“What?”

Lance covers his face with his hands and groans. “Don’t make me say it again, I know you understood me.”

“Why does Baldur want to go on a double date with you and your ‘boyfriend’?”

For some reason, Keith saying it doesn’t make it any easier and Lance drops back against his pillow, hoping if his face is doing something weird–like blushing–the new position will hide it well enough. Keith doesn’t stop him from his squirming.

“I don’t know,” Lance admits quietly. “He was telling me he wanted me to meet someone so we should do dinner sometime this week, and then he just throws out ‘and you can bring your boyfriend too!’”

Keith is quiet for a few minutes and Lance considers sitting up. If he could see Keith’s face, maybe he could know what he’s thinking. But he’s too much of a chicken.

“Maybe he meant Hunk?”

Lance squeezes his eyes shut. “Baldur went to high school with us, he would have just said Hunk if that’s who he meant.”

“You really want _me_ to come with you to dinner with _him_?”

Lance shifts in place. Why did he even ask? How does he get himself into these kinds of situations? “I kind of…already agreed. But if you don’t want to come you don’t have to. I can just say you got called in to work or…something.” _Or he could just explain the misunderstanding instead of making his life even more difficult._

Keith taps his foot until he sits up. His fingers hover over one of the stitched sharks on his socks until Lance meets his eye again.

“I’ll do it.”

Lance pinches himself, just to be safe. Keith snorts and swats his hand away.

“You’re always so dramatic,” He sits back again, picking up his book as if nothing strange has transpired between them.

Lance gapes at him. “ _What?_ That’s _it_? You’re not weirded out by this…at all?”

Keith arches a brow. “Did you want me to freak out?”

“Well…no. But what the hell, dude? How are you so chill about this?”

He shrugs one shoulder. “We spend most of our time together, even if it’s just for class or to hang out, we have keys to each other’s apartments, we can just fudge the details of when we started hooking up to be when we started dating, _if_ they even ask, and it’s barely even lying. Not a big deal for one dinner with your ex.”

Lance continues to stare at the person at the end of the bed, not totally sure it’s the right Keith or if he’s not actually dreaming this conversation. For some reason, Keith nonchalantly rattling off points Lance had forced himself not to dwell on hurts his head.

‘For some reason.’ Who is he kidding? He knows the reason. And it doesn’t make this conversation any easier.

Keith flashes him a crooked, sideways grin. “And I think I’ve gotten pretty good at pretending to like you lately.”

Lance kicks him hard enough he topples off the bed.

Keith comes up from the floor, swinging a spare pillow with righteous fury, and the ensuing tussle ends only when Pidge bangs on the wall and threatens to hack into the college and fail them both if they don’t quiet down so she can focus.

Lance isn’t totally sure he believes she’s capable of that- _yet_ -but they settle down regardless. Keith tosses one last pillow at him before reclaiming his seat at the end of the bed. His hair is a mess, his pony tail lost somewhere amongst the blankets in their fight. It’s a charming disarray. Lance wants to bury his hands in the dark strands, but he isn’t sure if it’s to straighten them, or mess them up more. Maybe a little of both?

“Are you sure you’re okay with this?” he asks instead. “You can say no. I’m not going to be mad, I get it. That’s not what…this thing between us is.”

Keith’s dark eyes focus on him. There’s something there that Lance recognizes but still doesn’t quite understand. But he also knows, despite how difficult he’s made this entire thing, part of the shine behind the dark irises is a fondness for him. It’s a look that makes him feel warm all over.

“Lance, will you please be my fake boyfriend for this dinner with your ex-boyfriend?”

Lance tries not to choke on his own saliva at Keith’s genuine tone. “I-I guess I can manage that.” His mouth is unbelievably dry. “For one evening.”

A tic starts in Keith’s jaw, for just a moment, before he relaxes, rolling his eyes, and Lance wonders if he imagined it. “Obviously.”

After a few minutes, silence officially settles over the room once again, and Lance is completely baffled by how comfortable it still manages to be, despite everything that had just transpired. Despite how much he feels like he lied, like he’s still lying. Shaking it off, he returns to his homework.

It’s surprisingly easy to focus now.

 

The fourth time Keith looks up, his deadpan expression borders frighteningly close to something more homicidal.

“If you ask me about this one more time, I actually will have a problem with it.”

Lance forces the questions down. “Do you want to make out?”

Keith blinks a few times, obviously not expecting the turn in conversation, before he decides the twist isn’t a big enough change to actually bother him, and he tosses his book behind him. Lance gasps out a surprised laugh, pushing his textbook off his lap. He spreads his legs further, making room for Keith to settle between them. Chest to chest, Keith holds himself up with one hand, while the other cups Lance’s jaw, tilting it higher. Lance finally buries his hands in Keith’s hair, resisting the urge to tug on it and escalate things further, before they’ve even started.

“You’re such a weirdo,” Keith mutters. It sounds like a complaint, but it doesn’t feel like it when he presses a soft kiss to the corner of his mouth.

Lance’s heart flutters in his chest and he pulls him even closer still. “Too bad you’re stuck with me, boyfriend.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I realized as I was writing that the little moment before they make out reminds me of a situation from one of my absolute favorite books (also about fake dating) and I was torn between enjoying it immensely and being terribly embarrassed by my own dorkiness.
> 
> The book Keith has this chapter is (at least inspired by the cover of) Beautiful Oblivion by Addison Moore (which might only be available as an ebook actually but shhh)
> 
> Thanks for reading!!!! <3


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been debating with myself for ages but I finally, ultimately decided to cut this chapter into two because the first half just felt so different from the second, but originally the two chapters being uploaded for this update were written together as one which is why the first one feels so short compared to the second half.
> 
> Please enjoy part 1 of 2 of this update! I had a lot of fun writing Pidge and Keith's scenes together (so much that I probably dragged them on too much) so I hope you can enjoy them as much as I have thus far!

Bi-weekly grocery shopping trips were another roommate tradition Keith wasn’t totally sure how he found himself a part of. This particular time around, he was accompanied by Pidge. Hunk was in charge of food and other kitchen necessities, always, and they all drew straws to see who would accompany him. The others got everything else. Keith isn’t totally sure how the system worked before he joined the group, because he can’t particularly imagine allowing any of them complete free range of a store, but he fell so naturally into the practice with them, it hadn’t been an issue he ever dwelled on for long.

His own basket currently holds a small bottle of laundry detergent and dryer sheets, as well as some toothpaste and deodorant. Meanwhile, Pidge, with a real cart, has a package of toilet paper for both his apartment and hers, and a video game he was fairly certain was not on anyone’s shopping list, though he wasn’t going to snitch on her-she had indulged him plenty of off-list items in the past.

She hangs over the handle of the cart, eyes drifting over various shampoos and conditioners listlessly. He doesn’t really need more soap for the moment, but the clearance price catches his eye and he drifts a few feet away.

Other than the quiet squeak of wheels in need of oil as Pidge rocks back and forth, the aisle is silent as he reads ingredients and wonders how he ever let Lance get so into his head he started actually caring about what went into his shampoo. There’s a rustle of paper as Pidge retrieves the shopping list from her pocket and mumbles, mostly to herself, something about hating “toiletries duty.” before he catches, “What kind of hair does Lance even _have_?”

Keith answers “Good.”

A long silence stretches between them as Keith realizes what he said and Pidge stares at him, clearly fighting between sadistic enjoyment and complete befuddlement by his constant disaster status.

“Holy fuck, Keith,” she finally says.

He covers his face, groaning. “I know.”

“Holy shit.”

“I know.”

She snorts, which is a surprisingly subdued laugh considering the absolute fool he’s making of himself and he tries to be thankful for that. “You seriously need to get it together and bone him. For _all_ our sakes.”

He drops his hand to glare at her, deadpan. “I’ve definitely already ‘boned’ him before. Many times. That’s what got me into this mess. And he’s-”

She holds up her hand. “I definitely do _not_ need the details. I meant, with your _heart._ You need to bone him with your heart. Metaphorically.”

Keith takes a moment to consider her bizarre statement before he decides, “That’s not something people say.”

 Pidge arches a brow, challenging him, but he stands by his conclusion. “People don’t say that.”

Finally, she shrugs. “Okay, you’re right. _But_ I’m also right. This is getting out of hand.”

Keith sighs, exhaling slowly before making his way back towards her. “Can we just…ignore what just happened and move on?” He scans over the bottles until he finds a familiar looking form and grabs it, flipping open the cap.

“Uhhhh, no.”

He puts the shampoo back and grabs another.

“Look, you know I love our bonding over you being hopelessly in love with your fuck buddy-“

“I told you that in confidence.” He interrupts, reaching for yet another soap.

“And me making fun of you in exchange for letting you complain about it,” she continues as if he hadn’t said anything. “But this is getting out of hand.”

Keith hands her the shampoo and matching conditioner.

She looks at the bottles as if she had never seen bottled soap before. “What?”

“That’s Lance’s favorite soap.”

Her expression contorts into something that looks painful and she has to take a deep breath before speaking. “Did you figure that out by smelling them?”

Keith feels his cheeks flush, but he fights past it, schooling his expression into something neutral and dropping the soap into her cart. “What’s next?”

“Hand soap.” She says between strained gasps. “Next aisle.”

He takes one last look at her over his shoulder. Her face is turning red in her effort to stay quiet. “Get it over with before you hurt yourself.” He mutters, leaving her alone with the cart.

He can hear her cackles from the next aisle over. He wonders how much of the store can. Not the whole store, right? Hopefully. Lance and Hunk are clear on the other side. There’s no way they’d be able to hear her and wonder what the hell set her off.

Roughly three minutes later, she joins him with a strangely serene expression as she pushes the cart to the liquid soap refills and grabs one. He arches a brow at her strange behavior, but she doesn’t look at him as she walks past.

“Are you done?” he asks.

“With your _heart_!” Is her only reply.

 

As usual, the food carts are significantly fuller than the one Keith and Pidge have when they meet up in the paper plate aisle. Hunk gives them a few extra items to retrieve while he and Lance finish, blaming Lance for not being finished already. Behind him, Lance shakes his head, pointing to a bag of vegetables in the front of the cart and mouthing “new recipe.” When Hunk turns around, Lance drops his arm and smiles brightly.

“What?”

“What are you saying?”

Lance presses a hand to his chest, looking offended. “I didn’t say anything.”

“I saw you moving your arm around.”

Lance looks past Hunk to Keith again and winks. “I was making fun of Keith’s hair.”

Also, as usual.

Keith snags the list from Hunk while he scolds Lance, pushing Pidge through the aisle before she can argue about their new responsibility and long before she thinks it’s a good idea to share his soap-selecting process. He can only handle so much humiliation in a day after all.

”Oh, Keith,” Hunk calls before they leave. “Would you like to stay for dinner tonight, since we’re taking so long here?”

Lance meets his eye again and smiles, but there’s something tense behind the look. Keith wonders if Lance is thinking about the same thing he is. The dinner they have in their future. He hadn’t been lying when he told Lance it wouldn’t be a big deal to pull it off for one night. It wouldn’t be, not really, but the longer he had to dwell on it the more he worried about just what he had gotten himself into.

“Uh sure Hunk, thanks.” He gives a short wave, and lets Pidge lead him the rest of the way out, grumbling incoherently under her breath all the while.

“What do we need?” she asks when they stop in front of frozen potatoes.

“Oh right,” he hands her the list.

He fidgets while she reads over the last few items. He knows he should be thinking about his own list, and trying to remember if he had anything frozen on it, but now he just has “Dinner” flashing through his mind like a pop-up he can’t close. He had told Lance it wasn’t a big deal. And it wasn’t. Not really. But he had barely been able to stop himself from thinking about it since agreeing, and Pidge’s comments while they shopped hadn’t helped. He doesn’t think she would have any advice that would suddenly make this whole situation suddenly feel less like he was a part of a bad rom-com but maybe it would make him feel…better?

“Do you want to get the ice cream?” she asks.

“Lance asked me to be his fake boyfriend at a dinner with Baldur on Thursday.” He answers, unhelpfully.

Pidge whips around so fast the pen behind her ear soars away, nearly taking Keith’s eye out. He dodges, just barely, and the offending projectile bounces off his shoulder before clattering to the ground behind him.

“What?”

”Are you asking because you didn’t hear me, or because you want clarification?”

She continues to gape at him before managing around her shock to say, ”Well, since I must be going crazy and there’s no way you just said Lance asked you to be his fake boyfriend, I guess I’m asking because I didn’t hear you.”

The fact that Pidge also thinks this is crazy, he realizes, does not bode well for him.

“No, you heard right.” He admits quietly while he retrieves her pen.

He hears her sigh deeply behind him and when he turns back around her glasses are pushed to the top of her head, bangs in a wild disarray, while she pinches the bridge of her nose and mutters incoherently under her breath.

He awkwardly holds the pen out to her until she opens her eyes again and takes it from him. “How did this happen?” she asks.

“The dinner or the pretending?”

“Both I guess.”

He kicks at the ground, the sole of his boot leaving a scuff on the white tile. Oops. “I guess Baldur misinterpreted,” Pidge interrupts with a snort but he ignores her. “our relationship when he ran into us at the coffee shop. Then Lance ran into him at work, and he and his ‘boyfriend’ were invited to dinner. I think it might be a double date? But it was kind of hard to understand Lance when he asked me about it.”

Pidge runs him through the wringer with questions about why Lance didn’t correct Baldur and where they were going to dinner and what Keith really thought about it and details Keith hadn’t even given himself time to worry about until his head hurts.

“Well,” she finally says after a long silence. “At least you won’t have to lie about much. That makes it easier.”

Maybe for his brain, but not his heart.

“So, what’s your plan?”

His brow furrows. “What plan?”

“To convince Lance by the end of the dinner that you don’t want to pretend anymore. Obviously.”

He doesn’t mean to laugh, but it bubbles out of him anyways. He bites his hand to muffle the noise, but he doesn’t sober up until Pidge elbows him with an indignant “I’m serious!”

“I am not scheming how to make Lance fall in love with me at a dinner with his ex like a bad romcom.”

“Lance is already in love with you,” she argues, ignoring his protests as she pulls out a tub of mint chocolate chip ice cream from the freezer. “So, half our work is done. When’s the dinner?”

“……Thursday.”

She presses a palm to her forehead and pushes, cursing him under her breath. She exchanges the small container for a gallon and drops it into the cart. “We have a long night ahead of us.”

 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part 2 of 2! The actual dinner!
> 
> Honestly, I hate writing meal scenes. They're always a hassle and as both a creative writer and someone who's studied literature there are very few reasons why people want to use meal scenes but for some god awful reason I keep writing them into my stories without thinking about it and then just coming to regret it horribly later. But I. Just. Keep. Doing. It. So I hope my...strong distaste for my own plot choices does not come through within the text haha
> 
> Also, Adam and Shiro have a short appearance at the end. I have not watched s7 yet (I've heard some of the spoilers but I have not watched it yet so I am pretending to live in ignorant bliss :P) so I'm assuming my characterization for Adam is not particularly accurate but I got the idea of putting him in this when he was first mentioned(?) so here we are. If for any reason you don't want to experience him in this fic, if you stop reading at the page break/"If Lance said anything in response, it was drowned out by the roar of the engine as he drove away," you will miss his presence entirely and stop where I would have stopped the chapter if I didn't want to include the little snippet I wrote anyways.
> 
> Thanks so much for sticking with me so far! Hopefully we have just one more chapter left of this where everything finally gets settled, maybe an epilogue if it feels like the next chapter is also dragging on for too long, but I'm hoping to wrap everything up with Lance's last chapter!

For at least the fifth time since leaving his apartment, Keith curses Pidge for convincing him of doing anything other than just _going_ to dinner. And for keeping him up until he was convinced. He feels exhausted and wired all at the same time. Like he’s going to vibrate right out of his carefully chosen outfit, either from nerves or a coffee overdose. So much for good impressions.

He hesitates outside Lance’s apartment. Who was he trying to leave a good impression on exactly? Sure, Pidge had convinced him this was his “opportunity,” but Lance _knew_ him. And he didn’t care what Baldur thought of him. Not really.

Well, mostly, anyways.

He shakes his head, pushing his latest nonsense worries out of his mind in favor of trying to remember everything Pidge suggested he do while still appearing “normal.” Even through the wood he could hear music playing somewhere in the apartment and Hunk singing along. Some of the tension leeks out of his shoulders at the sound.

He lifts a hand to knock, but the door swings open before his fist can make contact with the door. Lance blinks at him from around the raised hand.

“Were you just about to knock?”

“It’s polite!” He snaps instantly, forgetting the plan in his rush to defend himself.

“You have a key!” But Lance is smiling at him, eyes soft despite the obvious worry furrowing his brow, and Keith doesn’t really want to argue with him anymore.

He shoves his hands in his pocket, taking in the soft blue v-neck Lance wore and his cuffed jeans. A small white charm sits in the hollow of his throat from where it hangs on a black cord and not for the first time, Keith thinks about nosing against his throat and pressing a kiss to the same dip of sunned skin. Keith feels a little overdressed in his button up, but he figures his ripped jeans off set it well enough.

“You look good.”

Lance rolls his eyes, but Keith can tell he’s pleased with the compliment from the way his eyes crinkle for just a moment. “Thanks. Are you wearing eyeliner?”

Keith forces himself not to reach up and touch his eye like he’s wanted to since he put the damn stuff on. “Is it too much? It’s been a while since I last wore it.”

“No, no,” Lance tilts his head, studying him and Keith has to force himself not to fidget. “It looks really good.”

 _Do not blush, do not blush, hold it together Kogane._ Pidge would be so disappointed in him. He was supposed to be using this opportunity to woo Lance, not fall apart in the first five minutes. He knew Lance found him physically attractive already. There was no need to get flustered over nothing.

“Anyways, are you ready? Let’s head out.” Lance bounces once on the balls of his feet before stepping out into the hall and pulling the door shut behind him.

Keith arches a brow, pulling out his phone to check the time. “We’ve still got a few minutes,” he flashes the clock to Lance.

“Well you’re the one who showed up so early.”

Since when was that a bad thing? “Lance, what-”

Lance drops his head, hiding his face in his hands as he interrupts. “I didn’t tell Hunk what was going on.”

Okay, admittedly that was weird. Keith didn’t think there were any secrets between the two of them.

Well, apart from a _few_ things.

“…Why?”

Lance mutters something Keith doesn’t catch into his hands before he looks up again. “I didn’t think he would approve.”

Keith rolls his eyes, but yeah, Lance is probably right about that. He reaches out and takes Lance’s hand. He feels wide eyes on him as he leads them down the hall, but he forces himself not to freak out about it. Lance has held his hand dozens of time. It’s just the first time he’s ever initiated it.

“So, what does Hunk think you’re doing tonight?” He asks to distract himself.

Lance intertwines their fingers, adjusting his pace to match Keith’s. “Going to dinner with Baldur, alone. There were lots of suggestive looks followed by concerned questions until I hid from him in the shower for twenty minutes.”

“He wasn’t upset about not being invited?”

“His moms are calling from Sydney tonight, apparently with some big surprise so he’s a little preoccupied.”

“Sydney, Australia? I thought they were in Indonesia?”

“That was last week.” Lance pushes open the door to the outside, leading them to the parking lot. “Apparently after spending way too long in Paris they’re shortening some of their other stops so they can still make it home for the start of the semester.” He stops walking so suddenly Keith doesn’t notice and his arm jerks from Lance holding him in place.

He looks back at him. “…Would you rather drive?”

Lance looks between him and his bike before shaking his head. “No, but I didn’t bring a jacket.”

Keith, reluctantly, lets go of his hand to open the saddle bag on the back of his bike. His usual red leather jacket sat nestled under his spare helmet. He pulls both out, offering them to Lance. “You can wear mine.”

Lance takes the helmet but hesitates to take the jacket until Keith all but forces it into his hands.

“Hunk will wonder why you’re coming back for a jacket if you go up now.” He reminds him helpfully.

Lance scowls but accepts it. “So pushy.”

Rolling his eyes, Keith grabs his own helmet off the seat and straddles the bike. He watches from behind his shield as Lance shoves his own helmet on and wiggles into the jacket. It’s shorter on him than Keith and he ends up looking like a kid trying to fit into clothes he’s outgrown, but its oddly charming to see Lance in his clothes anyways.

Lance strikes a quick pose before going to the bike. “Am I edgy enough for you yet?”

Keith reaches for the spare pair of gloves tucked under the front of the seat, passing them back to him. “Almost.”

Lance slips them on before settling his arms around Keith’s waist. The helmets block any cologne or shampoo he might’ve noticed on Lance, but the warmth of his body is blindingly obvious through the thin material of his shirt. “Aw, I don’t get fingerless gloves like you? How am I supposed to be cool for my boyfriend?”

Ah. He wondered which one of them would break first and mention… _that_. He’s glad their positions aren’t reversed so Lance can’t feel the way his heart beat jumps for a moment.

“Sorry, I have to make sure my boyfriend is well protected, and you’re the one always telling me my fingerless gloves aren’t good enough.”

“Well they aren’t.” Lance fires back, but his response comes back delayed, as if he was hesitating.

Keith rolls his eyes, flipping the engine on. “Okay, thanks Shiro. I get it.”

He can’t see it, but he can easily picture in his mind the way Lance’s nose wrinkles in disgust as he groans. “Ugh, don’t call me your boyfriend and compare me to your brother in the same conversation.”

The bike jumps to life, and Keith’s answering laugh is lost in the roar.

 

Baldur and his…date are already seated at the table when they arrive. They both stand when they see Lance and Keith arrive, Baldur waving them over with a bright smile. Keith suddenly feels underdressed, even though the only real difference in their outfits is that Baldur is in slacks instead of jeans.

Lance waves back to him with a bright smile even as he mutters under his breath, “Why is he always so damn punctual?”

Keith elbows him.

Baldur comes around the table to hug Lance hello and shake Keith’s hand. The other man shakes both their hands as Baldur introduces them. He’s at least as tall as Baldur, which is impressive on its own, but while Baldur is all broad muscles, the other man is long and limber. His dark hair is swept back from his face and narrowed eyes watch them carefully as they take their seats. Keith is distinctly reminded of a cat by his slow, even movements.

“This is Taren,” Baldur finally introduces him. Keith doesn’t know him well, but he thinks Baldur might be nervous. “My fiancé.”

Lance sputters next to him, and Keith realizes, belatedly, he’s choking on the sip of water he took before the introduction. He pats him on the back until it sounds less like Lance is in danger of hacking up a lung.

“Holy shit,” he gasps into his water glass. Keith tries his best to keep a straight face as Lance takes another drink and clears his throat.

Baldur smiles awkwardly at him from across the table. “I’m sorry,”

Lance puts his glass down quickly, waving a hand. “No, no, no. Oh my God, you just surprised me. Don’t apologize. Congratulations! When did you guys…well get engaged, but meet? I want to hear everything!”

“Are you sure?”

Lance finds his hand under the table and squeezes. Keith isn’t sure what that means, but he squeezes back anyways.

“Of course,” Lance insists. “Start from the beginning.”

Baldur waxes a dramatic tale of missed meetings and misunderstandings with Taren’s company, apparently not one he works for but actually owns, that led to Baldur mistakenly being scheduled for a meeting with Taren, rather than his commanding officer, Taren’s older sister.

Baldur makes it through the first six months of their relationship before their food arrives. Lance’s face is warm and flushed, an easy going smile curling the corners of his lips, left behind by his laughter over Baldur explaining his horror at mixing up the sibling’s birthdays and being caught ten minutes before a dinner with Taren in a Wal-Mart trying to find some kind of present. Keith feels strangely relaxed listening to Baldur speak, perhaps because it saves him from having to speak himself and from dwelling on what he and Lance are…pretending, which makes the casual touches between them and wordless sharing of food feel easy and natural, until they're pointed out.

“Surely, we can take a break from talking about us for something else,” Taren requests. He had grown steadily more relaxed over the evening as well, until his narrow-eyed stare felt a little less piercing. “How did the two of you meet?”

Keith feels Lance tense next to him, but he nudges his foot, hoping to relay some kind of confidence and comfort. “We’re both aerospace majors, as are his roommates, so quite a few of our classes overlapped.”

“Keith and I didn’t really get along at first,” Lance adds, finding his voice after a moment. “But eventually he warmed up to me.”

Keith shakes his head. “Our rivalry was totally fabricated by him and it took his roommates befriending me for _him_ to warm up to _me_.”

Lance turns and pokes him in the side, eyes crinkling as Keith wiggles away from the touch. God how he wished Lance had never learned of his ticklish sides. “You were pretty icy to me in the beginning, mister, don’t put that all on me.”

“It was only because you were always trying to fight me,”

“Oh whatever-”

“You two are clearly very close,” Baldur interrupts Lance’s retort with a laugh. “How long have you been together?”

Lance is still facing him, so it’s easy to see the way his blue eyes widen for a split second. He makes a strangled expression before schooling it back to something neutral and opens his mouth to answer. Keith grabs his hand, and the words falter.

“Not long,” Keith answers instead. He can feel Lance’s eyes on him, he knows that’s not the answer they agreed upon, but he refuses to look at him. He knows he’ll chicken out if he does. “At first, we weren’t…really together, there was just this underlying ah…tension between us. So, we hooked up. I had suggested it, thinking it’d resolve things but instead I realized that one time wasn’t going to be enough. And luckily for me he felt the same enough to keep hooking up with me. So, we were friends with benefits for about a year.”

Taren takes a long sip of his drink, watching Keith as if taking apart his story piece by piece and determining which bits he believed. “When did you realize you wanted more than that?”

Keith laughs, rubbing the back of his head. He can hear Pidge’s voice in his head, a mantra reminding him why he’s doing this even as it feels like his heart is trying to make a run for it through his throat. “God, maybe a month into that. Maybe even sooner.”

“And you never said anything?” Baldur asks. He seems as invested in hearing their story as he was in telling his own.

“It felt too fragile I guess, the first time wasn’t supposed to be the start of anything, let alone a relationship and then after a few times, it felt like we had missed an opportunity. But for some reason, he didn’t get sick of me, and eventually I got tired of having something so close to what I wanted but not quite enough.”

Lance sucks in a quiet breath and he might not have even heard it if he didn’t feel hyper aware of _everything_ Lance in that moment.

“I’m glad it worked out for you two,” Baldur says. “And I’m glad you seem to appreciate Lance like he deserves.”

“Baldur,” Lance pleads quietly, covering his face. “You’re as bad as Hunk.”

“He’s more than I deserve,” Keith answers like its automatic. “I’m glad he lets me try to be good enough for him.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Lance snaps and Keith finally forces himself to look at his date. The tips of his ears are a fading red, a blush most wouldn’t even notice, and there’s something unreadable in his eyes under this new need to argue with Keith about something else. Even if that something else is Keith himself. “You’re great, you’re wonderful, I mean, I can’t imagine my life without you now, even just your friendship helped me so much, I can’t believe you’d say that.”

“Oh Baldur, look what you’ve started,” Taren whispers.

Keith assumes by the soft, joking tone he didn’t mean for them to hear but they do anyways. Lance blushes and apologizes for getting swept up in an argument before he excuses himself to the restroom. Baldur and Taren watch him go, but Keith can’t bring himself to turn around.

“I’m sorry,” Taren says once Lance is out of sight. “I didn’t mean to make either of you self-conscious.”

Keith waves him off. “Don’t worry, it’s not you. Lance uh…didn’t realize how long I was…harboring feelings? He’s still a little upset about my not saying anything before.”

Baldur shakes his head. “Well he can hardly judge, I didn’t even realize he liked me until Hunk basically spelled it out for me. I always just assumed his flirting was the same as what it meant for everyone else, and when it changed it was just because we had gotten closer.”

“To be fair, dear, you didn’t realize our first two dates were actually dates either.” Taren reminds him happily.

 

“You know you never did tell us how you two got engaged,” Lance complains as they head for the parking lot after dinner. “Who proposed?”

“He did,” Taren says, even as Baldur directs him in the opposite direction of Keith’s bike. “With the ring I had planned to use to propose to him.”

“What? Baldur how did you even-”

Baldur’s dark skin flushes with the force of his blush. “Why did you have to tell him such a thing?” he mutters. “Hunk asked to have lunch with me this weekend, if you tag along-”

“You definitely will be telling me the rest of this story.” Lance swears. “It was very nice to meet you Taren.”

Taren nods. “You as well. And you, Keith.”

Keith gives a small wave of acknowledgement before grabbing his helmet. “Nice to meet you.”

Lance gives Baldur one last farewell hug and when he returns, Keith is already helmeted and straddling the bike. He climbs on wordlessly, but Keith swears he can feel Lance’s need to say something weighing on them the whole ride to the apartment.

He takes Lance to the front door, rather than the main parking lot, and stays on the bike as Lance dismounts. It’s a cowardly thing to do, but ever since Lance disappeared into the bathroom at dinner, he hasn’t felt particularly brave. It wasn’t a particularly brave way to admit his feelings, either, he supposes, so it fits.

Lance fidgets with his helmet, shifting his weight back and forth rather than going into the building. “Keith,”

“Are you okay with what happened at dinner?” he interrupts.

Lance blinks at him a few times. “Uh…”

“I mean,” Keith continues. “I’ve never been in that position. But I imagine seeing an ex get engaged must feel weird.”

Lance kicks at the cement. “Right. Yeah. A little, I guess. But I’m happy for him. He deserves to be happy and they seem good together. I even liked Taren after he warmed up to us.”

Keith nods. “Yeah, I bet you two would get along.” He rolls his shoulders, faking a yawn even as his brain shouts for him to stop being so ridiculous. “Well I have an early shift tomorrow, so I should get going. Good night, Lance.”

If Lance said anything in response, it was drowned out by the roar of the engine as he drove away.

* * *

 

He wasn’t lying about his shift, but he wasn’t truly worried about being able to wake up in time if he stayed out later. He just wasn’t ready to face what he’d done. And he certainly wasn’t ready to do it alone.

Lights were on in the downstairs as he pulled in, and from behind the curtains he could see the form of someone moving around in the kitchen. He takes the porch steps two at a time, slipping in the back door and discarding shoes and helmet as he went until he reached the living room.

Where he promptly face-plants onto the couch.

A moment later he hears a quiet “Hello to you too, Keith” from somewhere above him.

He groans in response.

“Takashi,” Adam calls. “Your brother is being strange and melancholy on our couch again.”

The running water from the other room cuts off and a moment later a door opens. “Keith is here? Oh.”

Finally deciding he did need to breathe, Keith turns to see his brother and his brother’s fiancé standing side by side, watching him. Adam was dressed casually in sweats, with a book in his hand, while Shiro was still in slacks, though he was in just an undershirt, with a towel thrown over his shoulder.

“I thought you had a dinner tonight.” Shiro says in greeting, one eyebrow carefully arched. A perfected judgmental older brother/teacher look to complement its identical tone of voice.

“I did. We just left.”

“Where’s Lance?”

Keith turns back into the couch. “I dropped him off.”

The couch dips next to him as Shiro sits. “I’m assuming you just said you dropped him off, so what happened? Was dinner bad?”

Keith sighs, wondering just how long he can stay face-down in the couch and if Shiro and Adam will let him move in so he can’t be found for a while, but Shiro pokes him until he wiggles to avoid it, nearly pushing them both off the couch, and faces him again. He grabs a throw pillow, wrapping his arms around it and using it as a shield. He can see Adam still watching them from across the room with an amused smile.

“What?” he mumbles.

Shiro sighs. “What happened?”

“It’s stupid,” Keith says after a few minutes. Shiro opens his mouth to argue on reflex, but Keith nudges him. “It is. But it just happened so I would still like a few minutes to wallow in it before I get over it. I just didn’t want to do it alone. And Pidge lives with Lance. And its…about him.”

“I’m so honored to be your third choice of distraction,” Shiro places a hand on his heart as if it truly is an honor he never expected to receive. Keith nudges him again before Shiro can start waxing poetry about his younger brother’s social life. “Fine. You can stay as long as Adam says it’s okay.”

“Adam likes me,”

“That was before you interrupted my quiet night at home with your romantic failures.” Adam quips happily.

“Shiro,” Keith calls in the same tone of voice Adam used when he first arrived, despite Shiro not moving from his side. “Your fiancé is being rude and mocking me while I am feeling melancholy on your couch.”

Shiro stands up, ruffling Keith’s hair and pressing a kiss to Adam’s cheek as he goes back to the kitchen. As the door shuts, Keith hears “ _children_ ” muttered into the empty room.

Adam settles into an arm chair on the side of the room, opening his book again.

“Do you want me to leave?” Keith asks.

Adam flips a page. “No. You can continue to be pitiful on our couch,”

“Thank-”

“If you tell me what happened.”

“Devil.”

Adam smirks at the curse, but doesn’t take back the condition.

Keith drops the pillow onto his face. It’s not quite as effective as the couch cushion, but at least he doesn’t have to look at anyone. “I might have told Lance how I feel about him and then chickened out before he could talk to me about it. Or he missed what I was trying to say altogether, in which case to him I just acted like a dick dropping him off for no reason.”

A weight drops onto his stomach a moment later. Keith lifts the pillow to see Adam placing Kuro on his stomach. The cat’s three legs press uncomfortably into his stomach before she recognizes him and lays down, no longer worried about a stranger’s lap. He scratches the top of her head until she purrs loudly, lifting her head to nudge his hand lower.

“You’ll work it out,” Adam says. “If we can, you will too.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really truly had planned to wrap this all up in one chapter, but well at this point, I don't know why I thought this would work out any other way, so here we are with part 1 of the end. I've been going back and forth about splitting this chapter and if I split it when I should post this half because the second half isn't totally done yet, but this half has been done for days and every time I open the document I start tweaking things so I'm revoking my ability to do so by publishing it now to save me from worrying even more and hopefully to allow me a better focus on the final chapter. 
> 
> Unfortunately there is no Keith in this chapter, but there is some quality roommate-bonding and lots of forlorn pining!
> 
> I hope you enjoy as we all get one step closer to the final resolution!

Lance rolls over for the umpteenth time, reaching blindly for his phone on his desk to check the time. His hand knocks against his charger and there’s a shuffle of his phone and pictures from a pile on his desk falling in the crack between the desk and his bed. With a curse, he flips on his bedside lamp, rolling out of bed to collect the pictures before they are bent or folded. His phone screen glows face down on the fallen photographs, and when he picks it up, 3:29 A.M. flashes in front of him.

“Fuck.”

He tosses the phone onto his bed, not caring where it lands for the moment and gathers up the pictures. His friends are featured in all but a few landscape photos, but most obviously, Keith’s face stares up at him from most of them. His favorite is the one on top, where the sun sits behind Keith, casting a halo around his silhouette and his head is thrown back towards the sky. His face is cast in shadow, but Lance can still remember the warm smile that split Keith’s sunburned cheeks. The background is cast in a hazy gold as sunbeams reflect off the water behind him. By chance they all managed to find a day off that they shared and took a day trip to the beach. They piled into Hunk’s van with coolers of snacks and drinks and spent the day lounging on the sand or racing and splashing each other through the water. They stayed until it was too cold to stay in the water any longer, watching the stars blink to life overhead once the sun faded. They all came home pink from the sun. He took so many pictures, his memory card eventually ran out of space, and he had thought he took an equal number of everyone, and of the glittering lake, but once he developed the images, Keith’s form was more prominent than anything. He hid most of the self-indulgent images from his prying roommates, rather than hanging them around the apartment. Even the ones he felt particularly proud of suddenly felt too raw and personal.

He should have figured it all out months ago.

He shoves the pictures into one of his desk drawers, flipping off the light and climbing back into bed. He lays face down, trying to fall asleep through sheer force of will. It feels like an eternity passes in the dark as he fights every thought threatening to keep him awake.

Somewhere near his leg, his phone vibrates, interrupting his latest lull, and he reaches blindly for it.

3:34 A.M.

 _You’re lives are restored!_ claims the cheerful notification from the latest time-wasting game he’s downloaded.

He tosses his phone back towards the foot of his bed, closes his eyes, and tells himself he _has_ to go to sleep and to stop thinking about it _right now_.

3:35 A.M.

Lance throws off the covers and stumbles towards the door. Maybe a change in scenery will help him sleep. And his afternoon naps have proven plenty of times that the couch is a perfectly comfortable place to sleep. So, he heads for the living room.

It’s after three in the morning and neither of his roommates had, to his knowledge, any shocking revelations to pick apart until they went stir crazy, so he expects to find the living room empty. Pidge, however, is curled up in the corner of the couch. Her head is bent over her knees and the title screen of her newest game is flashing on the screen, bathing the room in a soft green light. Stepping lightly around her, he rummages for the remote control to turn off the tv.

The room is doused in total darkness in an instant. There’s a quiet rustle behind him.

“Ngh…Lance?” He turns around to see Pidge squinting up at him, rubbing at her temple. “What time is it?”

“…Late.”

She shifts, stretching, and he winces as he hears joints pop.

“What are you doing up then?” She asks.

He shuffles, putting down the remote and moving his arms like he can’t decide what to do with them. Eventually, he sits down on the couch beside her. He stares in the general direction of the darkened television, but he can feel her bemused gaze on him.

“Lance?” She prompts again, quieter.

“I can’t sleep. I’ve been…thinking.”

“About?”

He sighs, closing his eyes. In his head, he can so easily remember dinner. The soft blush that crept up high on Keith’s cheeks and the tips of his ears. How uncharacteristically warm Keith’s hand was in his as he talked.

“Something that happened…at dinner. And other…stuff I guess.”

“Something happened with Baldur?”

Lance opens his eyes to see the vague shape of Hunk standing in the doorway. Pidge makes a quiet noise in the back of her throat and a moment later the table lamp flashes to life. Hunk lifts a hand to cover his face, blinking rapidly against the new light. Once he’s finally adjusted, he moves across the room to sit on Lance’s other side.

“Are you okay?” He asks.

Lance sighs again. “Yeah, yeah. I think so. Did we wake you up?”

Hunk shakes his head. “I just heard you guys talking on my way back from the bathroom. Are you sure you’re okay? What happened?”

Lance drops his head to the back of the couch. “Yeah, I’m fine. I just….” He squints up at the ceiling, wishing he knew a better way to explain what’s been keeping him up. “I think Keith likes me?”

Silence stretches uncomfortably long between the three of them. When he lifts his head again, Pidge and Hunk are having some kind of silent conversation, exchanging strange looks with each other over his prone form.

“Just say whatever it is,” Lance grumbles, crossing his arms over his chest.

Hunk clears his throat awkwardly. “Um, you came to this conclusion because of your dinner with Baldur?”

Lance winces. Right. He hadn’t told Hunk. He avoids his friend’s eye.

“Keith um…might’ve been at dinner with us.”

“You didn’t tell Hunk?” Pidge asks, surprise coloring her words.

Lance arches a brow. “I didn’t tell you either.”

She blinks rapidly, eyes darting around the room. “Er, yes you did. Totally. You definitely were the one to tell me you were on a double date with Baldur.”

“A double date? With who?” Hunk looks between the two of them. “And, no offense Pidge, but since when do you tell her things and not me?”

Lance jumps to his feet, pacing around the coffee table. “I didn’t tell her! And yes, it was a double date. With me and Baldur. And Keith and Baldur’s fiancé.” Lance points accusingly. “And I didn’t tell you about it because I knew you would look at me just like that.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Hunk lies badly, struggling to school his expression into something neutral but his concerned, and marginally judgmental, look from before was unmistakable. He sighs. “Fine. That sounds like a horrible idea. But Baldur’s engaged? Really?”

Lance tugs a hand through his hair. “Yeah, I’m sure he’ll tell you all about it this weekend. They seem really happy.”

Hunk smiles. “Good. Great. I’m so glad. Are you-? Wait. I still don’t understand. You think Keith likes you because he agreed to be your date tonight?”

“They pretended to already be together.” Pidge adds helpfully.

Both boys gape at her.

“Lance!” Hunk scolds while Lance shouts over him, “Keith totally told you!”

Pidge shushes them both. “Fine, yes. Keith told me you guys were going to dinner.”

Lance leans closer to her. “What else did he tell you?”

“None of your business.” She shoves him out of her face. “So how did you come to the conclusion Keith likes you?”

Lance stares at her, as if he could pluck whatever answers he wanted out of her head himself, but eventually gives up. He sits on the edge of the coffee table, crossing his arms over his chest again. His foot taps unevenly against the floor. In his head, he remembers staring imploringly at Keith after dinner, practically begging for him to remove his helmet so Lance could see his eyes and try and figure out what the hell was going on.

“We agreed to just say we’ve been together for as long as we’ve been…friends with benefits.” He takes a deep breath. “But at dinner, Keith said something totally different. And maybe he just thought it was a more believable lie? But that doesn’t make any sense. And why would he spring it on me without explanation if it didn’t _mean_ something? It…it felt…real.” He drops his head between his arms, elbows digging painfully into his knees.

Hesitantly, a hand comes to rest on his shoulder. “Isn’t that…a good thing?” Hunk asks quietly.

Lance knows Hunk hesitates because Pidge is there, and while she apparently knew more about his and Keith’s arrangement than either of them realized, Hunk was the only one Lance had confided in about his feelings before. And he appreciates his friend’s concern, but he’s pretty sure after this freak-out this morning, the cat was already out of the bag. He glances up through his eye lashes anyways, watching Pidge look between the two of them carefully, piecing together confirmation for what she probably already knew.

“I’m not going to say anything,” she promises him.

He smiles despite the nervous bubbling in his chest.

“Yeah,” he sits up. “I do think it’s a good thing. But I realized something else tonight.”

His friends exchange another look. “What?”

“It’s not that I like him, I think I’m in love with him.”

Hunk’s eyes widen. “Oh.”

Pidge blinks at him a few times, as if his words didn’t register. “Wow.”

“…Yeah.”

No one says anything. Lance stands up again, resituating himself back on the couch between them. He rests his head against Hunk’s shoulder, but he reaches for Pidge’s hand. She lets him take one of her much smaller hands between both of his own, twisting their fingers together. His thumb presses against a freckle just above her wrist.

“You’re worried.” She says simply.

He nods. Hunk tilts his head to rest it against the top of Lance’s.

“I haven’t felt like this in a long time. I knew…I knew I liked Keith early on. Way too early into what we were doing but I let it go on because, at least it was something, right? But it finally hit me tonight.” He runs a hand over his face, and Pidge squeezes his other hand reassuringly.  “When he was talking about finally getting ‘what he wanted’ and being worthy of me. And when I wanted him to stay tonight after dinner, but he wouldn’t even take off his stupid helmet or get off his bike. And then as I laid in bed tossing and turning and pouring over everything he said and did at dinner, and before, until I felt like my head would explode. I didn’t just _like_ him. I love him. I want to date him for real, but I want to be the only one he dates,” He takes a shaky breath, dropping his voice even more. “Maybe forever.”

He hears Hunk inhale sharply above him, and sees the flash of surprise in Pidge’s eye, letting him know they both still heard him. But thankfully, neither of them say anything.

“What are you going to do?” Hunk finally asks.

Lance shrugs one shoulder. “I don’t know. I want to talk to him. But what if I’m too much? What if he thinks he likes me, but in an actual relationship with me he realizes I’m too hyper or too needy or affectionate or loud, or just… too much, or I care too much, and I scare him away? ‘Hey Keith I know you tried to tell me you like me last night, but I gotta up the stakes, because I’m in love with you’ doesn’t sound like a proposition he’d jump at.”

“Lance,” Pidge sighs. “Don’t be an idiot.”

“What?”

She nudges his leg with her own. “I get how that could be scary, but I think you and Keith are both aware you’ve pretty much been in a relationship the last few months.” He sniffles indignantly but she ignores him. “And I get how that could be scary, but if Keith really did take a chance to try and tell you how he feels tonight, doesn’t he at least deserve the chance to hear your reply?”

“What if it’s too much and he doesn’t want a _nything_ to do with me?”

Hunk lifts his head. “What if not hearing anything scares him off? I think you have to trust that he cares about you and his relationship with you more than he might fear you being…more invested than he is right now.”

Lance takes back his other hand to scrub them both over his face. He thinks about Keith’s smile. “I gotta tell him.” He stands up, but both his roommates grab at the hem of his shirt, keeping him in place. “What?”

“I think it could wait, just a little.” Hunk suggests awkwardly. He nods to the clock on the DVD player across the room.

4:05 A.M.

Lance drops his head. Right. This was probably a conversation best held during normal human waking hours. Plus, Keith had a morning shift.

“I’ll try and get some sleep then.” Lance looks between the two still on the couch. “Thank you. For listening. And talking me through this.”

Hunk stands up, going in for a hug. “Of course. That’s what friends are for.”

Pidge stands up slower, but a moment later he feels her thin arms snaking around his middle as well. “Whatever happens, you guys will work it out.”

 

Lance shuffles back into his room, carefully sidestepping the extra helmet he still had sitting on the floor at the foot of his bed as he went to his desk. He feels blindly across his chair until he finds it. It isn’t very comfortable, and the rough zipper snags at his skin as he folds it over his arm, but he doesn’t care as he climbs back into bed with Keith’s jacket. The cool leather is surprisingly soft under his hands as he lays it next to his pillow. It smells like Keith.

Lance fists a hand around the collar, anchoring himself to the jacket as he closes his eyes.

“I love him,” he whispers to the silent room. A practice run. He tries to image how Keith will look, but for once, he doesn’t have a single guess as to how he would respond. “I love you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Have I ever mentioned just how much I love the dynamics of the team? Because I really fuckin love these kids.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The end is here!
> 
> I wanted to put an eloquent, heart-felt note here, but this is what I get for finishing a chapter at 4am I guess (〃￣ω￣〃)ゞbut for real you guys, I have to thank you all so much. This project became so much bigger than I ever expected but you guys made it worth it. I loved how enthusiastic you all were about this series, it made working on this fic so much more fun. I'm still in awe over the reaction I got to this series, and seriously every comment and kudos and ask I got about it meant the world to me <3
> 
> As you can see from the changed rating and tags, there is explicit sexual content in this last chapter. (I think??) I tried something a little different in terms of my style w/ smut compared to "Unfair" and "Picture Perfect," so I hope you guys still like it!

Lance taps nervously against the top of the helmet in his lap. His stupid, lousy phone was almost dead in his jeans pocket and the hallway of Keith’s apartment wasn’t particularly exciting, so he was running out of distractions. And he was getting antsy.

He takes a deep breath, glancing up towards the clock at the end of the hallway for the fifth time in the last twenty minutes or so.

Keith is standing at the end of the hall, staring at him. One foot is on the landing, as if he froze mid-step up the stairs when he noticed Lance in the hall. Lance sucks in a sharp breath and he stretches out one leg before freezing again, not sure if he should stay seated or scramble to his feet.

Keith shakes off whatever stopped him and makes it the rest of the way up the stairs. He approaches Lance slowly, but Lance can see from the way he rolls his shoulders and glances around the hall, he’s trying to act as nonchalant as possible. Lance bends his leg again and stays seated.

Once he’s closer, Lance can see the eyeliner from yesterday smeared around his eyes. He’s in a blue t-shirt Lance doesn’t think belongs to him, but he recognizes for some reason he can’t name, that declares in small, white letters “it’s not rocket surgery.”

“New shirt?” Lance asks. His voice sounds weird, high and breathy, in his head, but he hopes he’s imagining it.

Keith’s brow furrows, before he looks down at himself. “Oh. Right. It’s Adam’s.”

There’s a ringing in his ears as his brain jumps into hyperdrive with a million guesses about ‘Adam.’ Lance tries to keep his voice steady when he asks “What?”

Keith’s eyes widen before his face does something Lance has never seen before, and he trips over his own words in order to spit out, “I crashed at Shiro’s last night.” He closes his eyes, taking a deep breath before continuing, calmer now, “I didn’t want to wear my shirt from last night to work but Shiro’s clothes are too big for me, so Adam lent me his shirt.”

Lance tries not to be obviously relieved by the explanation, remembering now why the shirt is familiar. “Right, I forgot you were related to like every professor in our department.”

“I am not,” Keith finally steps around him to unlock his door. “Why are you out here anyways?”

Lance gets to his feet slowly, gathering up the borrowed helmet and jacket. “Well I needed to return these,” he starts as he follows Keith inside.

The apartment is smaller than the one he shares with Hunk and Pidge, just enough space for one person, but Lance feels just as at home there as he does in his apartment, or back in his parent’s house. Some of his pictures, a few of their group and one landscape, are hung on the wall, next to a frame with two pictures, one of Keith and his parents, and another of just him and Shiro. He doesn’t know when Keith put up some of his pictures next to his prized ones of his family, but it makes his chest feel tight with something unspoken.

Keith tosses his backpack onto his couch and toes off his shoes before facing Lance again. “That could have waited, but I meant outside. In the hall. You have a key.”

Lance shifts his weight, putting the helmet down on the end of his coffee table. He crosses his arms over his chest, before deciding against it and shoving them in his pockets. “I didn’t want you to feel like I was ambushing you. I mean I did, either way, kind of. But waiting outside felt less…abrasive than like lying in wait for you inside your apartment, you know?” He glances up. Keith is leaning against the back of the couch, watching him. _His_ arms _are_ crossed over his chest. The space between them is uncomfortably pronounced. Defensive. “We need to talk about what happened at dinner last night.”

Keith looks away, rubbing the back of his neck. “I know,” he breathes. “I know.”

Lance wants to reach for him, but he hesitates. He’s determined to stay focused and the idea of touching Keith feels like a guaranteed distraction. “I’ve been thinking about what you said at dinner last night. Our lie. Or yours really, considering the changes you made,” Keith grimaces as Lance talks. “I’ve turned it over in my head a million different ways, but it doesn’t make sense, unless you had another reason for saying it,” He swings his own backpack off his shoulder, unzipping it and reaching for the over-filled manilla envelope inside. The weight alone feels damning. He hesitates before he hands it to Keith, across the table and couch that separate them.

Trust.

Keith stares at the bulging package in confusion. “What is this?”

Focus.

“Did you mean what you said last night?” Lance can’t take his eyes off Keith as his real question is finally spoken. He sees his eyes widen and squeeze shut again, sees the blush that starts hedging across his cheeks, sees the way he tenses, and finally the small, self-deprecating smile that he wishes wasn’t so damn familiar. He can hear his pulse roaring in his ears, but he realizes before Keith even looks up, he knows the answer.

“Every word.” 

He feels like his chest is going to burst with the effort of not throwing himself across the room. He forces himself to wait. “E-Even the time?”

Keith nods, minutely. “It’s…crazy, I know but-”

“The envelope is full of pictures.”

Keith’s expression contorts, obviously not expecting Lance to seemingly ignore his confession. “Of what?”

“You.”

The air feels charged as his meaning settles over Keith. Lance is frozen in place as he steps, ever so slowly, around the couch. He stands directly across from Lance, only the coffee table separating them, as he opens the envelope. He holds it above the table and over turns it.

Lance tries not to cringe as the pictures tumble out, some landing with a soft thud, still in a pile, but others scatter, fluttering around them. Most land on the table, but others glide across the smooth surface and drop around their feet. Some of the pictures have all of them together, or random pairings of Keith and someone else, but the vast majority, are just of him. Over and over. Outside, inside, in his apartment and Lance’s, on campus, at the beach, in the store, in the car, awake, asleep, candid and posed. He feels like his heart has been laid bare across the table and even knowing how Keith feels, its nerve-wracking.

How the hell did Keith do it?

Keith is silent, even after the last picture has fallen, simply staring at the evidence before him.

“Lance,” he says but he falls silent again, hesitating as if not sure what to say.

Lance can practically hear him processing. He considers letting him squirm, like Keith did to him the night before, but he needs to get it off his chest, for as much his benefit as Keith’s.

“I’m in love with you,” he says with an awkward shrug. “I’m not really sure for how long, but I’ve known the whole time we’ve been doing this… _thing_ that it was never going to be enough for me. God, that first blowjob alone felt like it was going to ruin me, and I was already a little obsessed with you, way back then.” Keith drops onto the couch, still staring at the pile of photographs in disbelief. He grabs a handful, flipping through them as Lance talks. “But I didn’t realize how much…feeling I let get tangled up in this until yesterday. I realize…I know this might, _I_ might, be…a lot but,” he hesitates as Keith looks up at him again. “If we’re going to do…this, do something, I have to be totally honest with you, or it’s not going to feel like anything has changed and…are you laughing at me?”

Keith had covered his face, and he was silent, but the tell-tale shake of his shoulders was enough. Lance gapes at him.

“You are! I’m literally _pouring_ my heart out to you here, and you’re laughing at me! You asshole!” This time, Keith can’t muffle all of the sound, and a few breathless giggles trickle past his hands. Lance stomps around the table, reaching for a throw pillow and swinging it, hard. “Keith!”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Keith raises his hands to ward off another attack, but Lance hits him again anyways. Keith snatches the pillow from him, but the satisfying _thump_ of it making contact, and his dazed look is worth it. “Lance, seriously, I’m sorry. I swear I wasn’t laughing at you.”

Lance squints at him suspiciously. “Then at what?”

“Well...both of us, I guess. I mean, God we’ve been so fucking stupid.” He stands up, tossing the pillow behind him. “How _long_ could we have been together already if we had just stopped and thought about it for one goddamn second?”

Lance bites the inside of his cheek, either from surprise or to stop the smile he feels creeping up, he’s not sure. “It doesn’t freak you out?”

Keith smiles at him, cheeks flushed and eyes laughing. He takes Lance’s hands in his, stepping into his space. “I told Pidge I was pretty sure I was in love with you two and half months ago.”

“I knew she knew something, that little gremlin.” Lance swears but he doesn’t mean it. How can he care now? He feels giddy. “That long? What made you realize then?”

“You had gone to visit your family for the weekend, but I was spending the weekend at your apartment to work on a project with Pidge,” Keith starts, and Lance knows exactly what weekend he’s talking about. Hunk had sent him constant updates about it, afraid Keith and Pidge were going to cause some kind of catastrophe when left alone together. It felt like it was an eternity ago. “I kept going into your room, forgetting you weren’t there. I bought a pack of your gum when we went out, just because it reminded me of you. And then you came home, and Rachel had dyed the tips of your hair blue and Nadia and Sylvio had drawn all sorts of silly pictures on your arms to match when you babysat and you couldn’t bring yourself to scrub them away, so that night when I stayed over, you spent hours telling me about what they were and then you fell asleep. In my arms. And the last thing you said to me was ‘I had fun, but I’m glad you were here when I came home.’ And I just knew, I wanted you to keep thinking of coming back to me as coming back home.”

Lance buries his face in the crook of Keith’s shoulder, cheeks burning. His smile feels wide enough to split his lip. “I didn’t know you were such a romantic,” he mutters against Keith’s throat. He feels Keith shiver.

“I wasn’t, I don’t think, before you.”

Lance closes his eyes. “What about all those romances you read, hm? Did I make you pick up that habit?”

Keith laughs. He drops one hand to rest on Lance’s hips. “No, but I started interpreting what happened differently after you.”

Lance squeezes his hand. If he’s somehow imaging this, he flat-out refuses to wake up again. “Can I kiss you?”

Keith snorts, knocking his chin gently against Lance’s head, but his voice is unfairly soft when he replies, “Whenever you want.”

Lance looks up at him, seriously. “I don’t think you want to give me that kind of free range.”

Keith lifts his hand again, cupping Lance’s face and ducking closer until their noses brush and his words brush over Lance like feather-light kisses of their own. “I’ve wanted to since the first time you asked.”

Lance closes the distance between them, shifting his weight and pushing himself even further into Keith’s personal space. He tangles his freehand in the ends of his hair, while his other stays intertwined with Keith’s.

Keith always kissed hard and reckless, a fiery energy Lance has always loved to be on the receiving end of, but now his smile interrupts the simple movement, and Lance might have actually minded, if he was any better.

“Hey,” he nips at Keith’s bottom lip. He lets go of his hand to wrap his other arm around his waist, holding him close. “We’re supposed to be kissing.”

He feels Keith’s laugh more than hears it as Keith slides a hand into his back pocket.

“You’re the one talking,” he argues.

Lance kisses the corner of his mouth. “Shh. Now stop smiling so I can kiss you more.”

Keith pulls him closer. “I can’t. You should stop smiling so you can kiss me more.”

Lance tugs at his hair, shifting again to press a kiss to his jaw. “I can’t,” he whispers against his skin. Keith’s responding hum vibrates under his lips. Lance glances at him through his lashes, and all he can see is a stretch of flushed skin and Keith’s teeth worrying his bottom lip as he fights his growing smile. “Hey,” he whispers. “I love you.”

“Fuck,” Keith grabs his face and Lance finally feels that sloppy passion as Keith all but shoves their mouths together. He breaks the kiss a moment later, still cradling Lance. He runs his thumb over his cheek and Lance feels delicate in his hold. “Hey, Lance?”

He licks his lips. “Yeah?”

“I’m in love with you.”

Lance pushes Keith back onto the couch. Keith slips a finger in his belt loop as he drops down, dragging Lance with him. He goes willingly. Stradling his lap, Lance drags his fingers through Keith’s hair, and thrills at the shiver he feels wrack through his body at the simple touch.

“Say it again,” Lance demands.

“I,” Keith gasps, needy and breathless, as Lance tugs on his hair, leaning into the touch. “I love you.”

Lance’s eyes flutter shut at the whispered words. He sucks at the exposed underside of his jaw before dipping lower still, pulling the collar of his shirt down with him. “Don’t wear other guys’ shirts anymore.” Lance mutters against his collarbone, not registering he’s spoken aloud until he hears Keith snort above him.

“I didn’t realize you were the jealous type,” he teases.

Lance sits up straight, trying to ignore the flush he feels spreading across his face. “You weren’t supposed to hear that.”

Keith ignores him, dislodging his arms and tugging the offending shirt off. “Better?”

Hesitantly, he reaches for him again. Lance places a hand on either side of his throat, thumb pressing against his erratic pulse. Keith’s bare skin is warm under his hands and a smattering of freckles collect on his shoulders, disappearing under Lance’s hands.

“Perfect,” he whispers. “But I really didn’t-I mean I know it was just _Adam,_ and also you’re your own person and-”

Keith grabs his hips and drags Lance impossibly closer to him. He noses against Lance’s jaw, the closest thing he can reach at that angle, while his hands travel up, mapping nonsense across his back in feather-light touches. “I haven’t been with anyone else in six months, I haven’t even really _wanted_ to be with anyone else for even longer.” Lance feels his heart jump and he knows Keith can feel it too. “I’m yours, Lance. I’ve _been_ yours.”

“Me too. I mean,” Lance takes a shaky breath as one of Keith’s hands sneaks back down and under the hem of his shirt. His fingers are still so stupidly cold compared to the rest of him. “I’m yours. I only really kept seeing other people in the beginning because I was afraid you’d think I was getting the wrong idea about what we were doing. You…you didn’t really seem like the relationship type.”

“I never had a reason to be, before.”

Lance tucks a few flyaway strands of hair behind Keith’s ear as he feels a kiss pressed against his Adam’s apple. He leans away, just enough to meet Keith’s eye. “I love you,”

Keith grins, reaching up for a kiss. Lance bends to meet him. They kiss until Lance’s chest begins to burn and he feels lightheaded between the lack of air and abundance of _Keith, Keith, Keith._

And then they kiss some more.

When Keith finally pulls away, Lance follows after him with a needy whine that has Keith grabbing at his hips with a bruising strength.

“Keith,” he whispers. “C’mon,”

Keith groans under him, fingers flexing around him like he’s not sure if he wants to let go or not. “Lance, you’re killing me. Not everyone has your swimmer’s lung-capacity.”

Lance laughs until he snorts, and then laughs more at the goofy smile Keith gives him at the sound. His chest hurts all over again.

“Fine,” he leans back and finally shrugs off his own shirt. “Catch your breath.”

Slightly warmer fingers trail over his bare sides. “You’re not making it easy,”

Lance rolls his eyes, but he doesn’t even bother to fight his smile. “Do you have-”

“Not in here.”

“You don’t even know what I was going to ask!” He protests, but its only met with an unimpressed look. “Whatever,” He climbs off of the couch, and Keith’s lap, with a scoff. “I can’t believe you’re making this so difficult,”

He hears Keith follow after him across the room as he heads for his bedroom, so he’s not at all surprised to feel arms wrap around his waist from behind while Keith’s breath tickles the back of his neck.

“You’re the one who insisted we keep anything tempting out of public areas, just to be safe, even though I live alone,” Keith reminds him helpfully. Lance only vaguely remembers that argument, fairly certain it was around the time of his newly discovered hickey phase, but he’s a little miffed at past him for complicating things. But Keith doesn’t need to know that.

“Shiro has a key. Safer is definitely better than sorry.”

Keith snorts. “Shiro would probably agree with you there,”

Lance starts to move again, but Keith doesn’t let it dislodge his arms from their place around Lance. So, they shuffle together. It slows their trek across the small apartment considerably, but Lance doesn’t mind the snail’s pace.

“We don’t have to do anything,” Keith finally says as they reach his bedroom.

Lance glances over his shoulder but Keith is looking at something behind them. “Unless that’s your way of telling me you’d rather not…”

Keith turns to meet his eye. His hair tickles Lance’s nose as it swishes around his head in the disarray Lance’s wandering hands left it in. “It’s not. I’m just…making sure, I guess. This isn’t really how I expected today to go.”

“Good,” Lance winks. “Because I intend to make sure you don’t doubt this ever again by the time we’re done.”

He feels Keith’s heart jump pressed against his back, hears him inhale sharply, and sees his dark eyes widen. He loves all of it, all of him. But his favorite reaction is the shaky “yeah okay,” followed by Keith pushing him into his bedroom.

He grabs Keith’s hand as he goes, and together they tumble, laughing, into the room. Keith only just barely manages to flip on the lights as Lance tugs them to the bed. He drops down first, letting Keith climb over him. He has a very specific idea in mind, but for the moment he’s happy to just enjoy the picture Keith makes leaning over him, and the weight against his legs. He runs a hand through Keith’s hair again, tucking it behind his ear.

“It’s crazy for me to wish I had my camera right now, isn’t it?”

Keith turns his head, catching Lance’s hand before it can drop and presses a kiss to his palm. “Definitely,” Lance feels him grin against his hand. “You have enough pictures of me to last a lifetime. More than I ever thought I’d allow to be taken of me.”

Lance laughs through his nose. He loves all of those pictures, but he’s aware they’re a little much. “I just don’t ever want to forget the people I care about, or the memories I make with them.”

“I’m right here,” Keith says seriously. “I’m not going anywhere. And if somehow, you forget, I’ll still be right here, making new memories with you.”

Lance pulls him down for another kiss. Keith swallows down his shaky exhale, only to match it with one of his own as Lance rolls his hips up to meet him.

“Speaking of pictures,” Keith says against his mouth, nipping at Lance’s bottom lip as he tries to interrupt him with another kiss. “those…ones you took of me before. Are they in that pile in the other room?”

Between the weight of Keith on top of him and the breathless feeling he has after everything that’s happened, it takes Lance a few moments to realize what Keith is talking about. The blush hits him instantly, and Keith is close enough to feel the heat of his cheeks, close enough to press his laugh against the flushed skin of his cheeks in between feather-light kisses.

“Is that a yes?”

“N-No,” Lance finally manages, though his voice sounds funny to his own ears. “I…thought about it, but printing them off…it felt like too much of a risk?” He pauses, considering Keith’s question, and what could have prompted it. “Did you want those pictures to be in there?”

He feels more than hears Keith’s answering sigh and it sends a shiver down his back. “I just wondered, I guess, if after you took them you ever…did anything with them.”

“I didn’t show them to people, I told you I wouldn’t.”

Keith sits up to look at him and there’s a fading flush to his cheeks and Lance can’t decide if he wants to kiss it or run his fingers over it more. “That’s not what I meant.”

It takes too long for Keith’s meaning to sink in and it takes all of his self-control not to squirm off the bed because _wow_ that is not what he thought he’d have to talk about today, at all.

“Um…I thought about it, a few times, and I…I did. Once. But it felt too weird.”

Keith tilts his head, as if puzzled, but his expression doesn’t change. “Why? It’s not that different from sexting.”

Lance shifts, the closest he can get to squirming out of this with Keith still straddling him. “That’s different. Then we’re both, aware of what’s going on, and talking. Those pictures, I mean, you let me take them but that’s different from letting me…”

“Jerk off to them?”

Lance slaps half-heartedly at his thigh. “And besides, back then I thought there was no way you’d want anything more from me, so it felt like I was taking advantage somehow, I guess.”

Keith places a hand on his chest, fingers trailing over smooth, warm skin, hesitating over his rapid heartbeat. “You wouldn’t have been,”

“I know that _now_ but-”

“I thought about it.”

“Jerking off to artful nudes you took of me without my knowing?” Lance asks. “If you wanted a picture you could have just-”

“About _you_ , and the pictures you took, of me.” Keith interrupts, carefully avoiding his eye, but his meaning is clear.

Lance freezes, but it feels like his brain is in hyperdrive. He’s seen Keith masturbate before. In some situations, it was undeniably hot despite his preference for hands-on, but imagining Keith, alone, touching himself, while thinking of Lance doing the same and thinking of _him_?

“…Lance?” Keith waves a hand in front of his face hesitantly. “What is happening in that head of yours, sharpshooter? You can’t just-”

Lance wraps an arm around his waist, and bucks his hips, flipping them over so Keith is the one with his back to the mattress. Grabbing his face in both hands, Lance lifts his chin and presses their mouths together, rolling their hips together at the same time. Keith groans into his mouth, jaw dropping wider with the sound, and it only makes Lance want to press him even deeper into the mattress.

Keith grabs at his sides, pulling him closer as he arches up to meet him. Lance drops a hand from his face, and then both hands, to reach between them, fingers fumbling with belts and buttons while Keith continues to rut against him. He flits back and forth between them, like he can’t decide if he wants to get his hands on himself or Keith first.

“We’re coming back to _that_ conversation.” Lance hisses as Keith finally gets impatient enough to push his hands off and do away with his belt himself. “Later.”

“If it makes you react like that again? Absolutely.”

Lance scoots down the bed to tug Keith’s jeans off, scowling at him even as he helps him out of his clothes. “Ass.”

Keith snorts, readjusting himself on the bed. “You like it.”

“Your ass?” Lance taunts. “Sure. You? _Well_ …”

Keith kicks at him, half-heartedly with a wobbly smile. Lance takes him in. Dark hair a disarray around his pale face. Dark eyes following Lance’s every move. A small scar under his lip from a piercing he hasn’t worn in years. A pair of dog tags – Shiro’s – hang from a silver chain around his throat. A purple tattoo of a dagger, apparently a matching one to his late mother’s, is etched on the inside of his right forearm, while just above his elbow is an antique firemen’s hat with his father’s old station number on the front. The pale, puckered line of an appendectomy scar sits just above his hip.

They’re all details Lance knows. Details he’s spent hours cataloging in his mind and through his camera. Something about them feels different now.

He runs his hands over Keith’s legs, gooseflesh jumping under his touch.

“Lance?”

Lance’s eyes jump back up to his face. “This is all real?”

Keith nods, sitting up to reach for his hand. “Yeah, it is.”

“I love you,” Lance says like he’s still trying the words out for size. But he knows they fit.

“I know,”

Lance grabs just above his bent knees and yanks Keith closer. “You did _not_ just Han Solo-me.”

Keith snorts, pressing a smug grin against his jaw. “Take your pants off,”

“Tsk,” Lance slips off the bed to do just that, even as Keith chases him for another kiss. “Forgot what a sweet talker you are,”

“That’s what won you over to begin with, wasn’t it?” Keith watches him as he undresses, and Lance thinks in the past it might have made him nervous, but now he’s acutely aware of something fond in Keith’s gaze.

“You mean your winning lines like ‘Can I blow you?’”

Keith laughs around an awkward, muffled groan. “How the hell did that work to begin with?” he asks as Lance settles over him once again.

His hands immediately move to trail over Lance’s newly bared flesh, up his thighs to his hips. Lance drops down, balancing his weight on one arm so he can further ruin Keith’s hair as he kisses him. Keith’s soft, exploratory touches turn harsh, blunt nails scratching fiery trails into his skin, hands groping his ass. He pushes Keith’s hips deeper into the mattress with the rhythmic roll of his own, the hot, velvet drag of flesh against flesh as he swallows down Keith’s aborted, breathless moans.

There’s lube and condoms in Keith’s bedside table, in arms reach, but it takes a serious force of will to drag himself away from Keith’s lips long enough to get them. Keith bites at the junction of his shoulder hard enough to drag a surprised hiss from him.

“Don’t distract me,” he scolds, even as he dips in for another kiss, one hand rolling the newly retrieved bottle against his leg to warm it.

“What are you doing?”

Lance glances at the bottle against his leg. “Like currently, or…?”

Keith pinches his side and Lance will deny the indignant squeal if Keith ever mentions it again.

“Are you-?”

“Planning to ride you into the mattress? Yeah.”

There’s a satisfying flash of something dark and wild in Keith’s eyes before his hand stops Lance’s own from opening the lube.

He takes a deep, steadying breath. “Can I-?”

Lance lets him take the bottle from him, delayed understanding registering. “O-Oh yeah, okay.”

They readjust, shifting and sliding, pillows and blankets and limbs bent in awkward places until Keith is sitting up, Lance in his lap, legs bracketing either side of his hips. Keith’s fingers drag, feather-light, over the small of his back in nonsense patterns.

“You sure?” Keith asks, softly. He’s wearing an expression Lance is sure he’s seen a dozen times before. He doesn’t know how he ever looked at it in the past and not seen it reflecting the exact same thing he sees in his own eyes in the mirror and pictures of the two of them when it is so unbelievably clear now.

“Not exactly my first rodeo, Mullet.”

Keith shakes his head and presses a kiss to his shoulder. “It feels different though,”

“Yeah,” Lance sighs breathlessly as he feels Keith’s touch feel more insistent, hot and heavy against his already burning skin. “It does.”

One hand goes to his hip, pulling him impossibly closer still. Keith tilts his head up to match the difference, watching Lance’s face change with each miniscule movement. “Kiss me?”

Lance quirks a smile around a quiet gasp. “Thought you’d never ask,”

It feels like every sense is overwhelmed with just _Keith, Keith, Keith._ He’s acutely aware of every brush of skin against skin, of the bruising press of a hand against his hip and each electric drag of fingers inside him as they move in sync. Soft hair against his own hands as his lips move more and more fervently against Keith’s. All he can smell, all he can taste, is Keith. All he can think about is Keith, Keith touching him, Keith kissing him, Keith loving him.

“ _Shit_ ,” he breaks their kiss with a gasp, only to press open-mouthed kisses along Keith’s jaw. Keith stills, worried about the exclamation, but Lance keeps rocking against him until he gets back with the program. “I love you.”

Keith’s breathless, relieved laugh is quiet enough that Lance almost doesn’t catch it. He hopes he never stops being so damn aware of everything about Keith. “Are you ever going to get tired of saying that?”

Lance looks up to meet his eye. “Absolutely not.”

Keith’s hand leaves his hip to cup his cheek, and flutters away again to his back. “Good.”

Keith shifts them, gently, almost reverently, lowering Lance to the mattress as he kisses down his chest, and Lance wants to protest the movement, but the new angle has his back arching off the mattress, only for Keith to push him down with his own weight covering his body.

“Keith,” he gasps, not sure what he’s going to say but it feels like he’s going to explode if there isn’t _some_ kind of relief.

“Shh,” Keith presses a kiss to the tattoo curling around his abdomen, and then just below his belly button. “Let me take care of you.”

And then there is a mouth covering his cock and _oh fuck._

Lance thinks he might actually cry. His hands fist into Keith’s sheets, for fear of hurting him if he buries his hands in his hair now, no matter how much he might want to. Keith hums around him, and his thighs tremble with the effort of staying spread as his hips thrust up.

“H-Holy shit,” Lance can’t even bring himself to be bothered by the broken cry, even with how acutely aware of how vocal he’s being, how much more than normal. “Keith, K-Keith, fuck you gotta, you gotta stop or I’m not going to last.”

Keith, blessedly, relents, releasing his cock from the wet heat of his mouth, but he drags his lips against Lance’s burning skin, nipping at his hips between soft kisses. His hand, however, never stops moving and Lance feels frayed and electric around the edges.

It takes all of his willpower to move them again, forcing Keith back against the mattress and pushing his hands away for the moment as he tries to take charge of the situation again. He straddles Keith’s hips once again, taking in his pleased expression and wet, swollen lips.

“Let’s get this show on the road,”

“You are the show,” Keith replies with a goofy, love-struck smile Lance wants to kiss.

So, he does.

Again. And again.

“You.” Kiss. “Are.” Kiss. “Ridiculous.”

He feels blindly for the condom between berating Keith and swatting his wandering hands away, but Keith seems determined to rile him up again, until Lance drags a hand over his neglected erection. Keith all but melts into the mattress beneath him with a groan. 

Lance smirks, twisting his wrist torturously slow. “Ready to cooperate yet?”

“ _Shit._ Yes, fine.”

He pumps his hand over Keith’s cock a few more times before he takes mercy on them both and rolls the condom over him. Keith offers him lube before he has to ask. He spreads it generously over his cock before tossing it in the general direction of the side table.

There’s a clatter of the bottle taking something down with it when he misses the table, but Lance, expertly, kisses away the half-hearted glare Keith sends his way for it.

“You’re a mess,” Keith mutters against his mouth, searching for Lance’s hips and pulling him closer.

Lance hums, shifting and positioning himself over him. Reaching between them, he steadies Keith’s cock just enough to press the head inside him. He swallows down Keith’s stuttered gasp with a final kiss before he breaks away. Dragging his hands over Keith’s chest, he pushes himself into a sitting position, sinking just a little further onto his cock in the process.

“And yet you love me anyways,” he winks.

Keith grabs one of his hands, pulling it up to press a kiss to the inside of his wrist. The gentle touch, combined with the near-desperate need to keep as many points of contact between them as possible, is almost enough for Lance to ignore the building burn in his legs as he kept his steady, but painfully slow, pace. Keith’s free hand drops to wrap around his leg, just above and behind his knee, supporting Lance as much as he can from his position.

Lance breathes deeply through his nose, focusing on Keith’s strong hand just under him, and the slow drag of his tongue over Lance’s palm. Keith nips at the pads of his fingers, kissing the already fading sting away a moment later. He wants to keep watching him, keep seeing, and never stop taking in, the soft look on Keith’s face, but his eyes flutter shut of their own accord, and his jaw drops in a silent gasp, as he sinks all the way down. Keith sucks two of his fingers into his mouth, but Lance, attuned to him, always, would have heard the muffled moan even if he hadn’t also felt it vibrating around his hand.

Between the hand resting low of Keith’s abdomen and the strong legs resting just behind his ass, Lance can feel just how tight Keith is strung in his efforts not to move until Lance gives the okay.    

He opens his eyes.

And Keith’s eyes, soft and dark, are trained on him. Just like before, just like always.

Lance presses his fingers more insistently against Keith’s tongue and he opens his mouth wider to accommodate the added pressure. So, when Lance gives the first roll his hips, Keith’s responding moan is loud and clear.

Regrettably, he pulls his hand away from Keith’s talented mouth for better leverage as he rolls his hips again. Keith’s hands go around to rest on his thighs tensing over the flexing muscle as Lance sets their rhythm. Lance pushes himself up to sink back down with the next roll of his hips. He feels Keith lose some of his normally impeccable control, hips snapping up to meet Lance’s movement. It pulls a groan from between clenched teeth. It feels unreal how deep it drove Keith inside him.

A hand brushes up his side, tracing feather-light patterns over his lower back. “Shit, sorry, are you okay?” Keith asks, and his voice is unbelievably soft, considering the thrumming desire Lance can hear under the thread of concern.

Lance meets his eye as he pushes himself once more. “Do that again.”

Keith doesn’t need to be told twice. His hand drops back to Lance’s hip and Lance nearly groans again at the strength behind his bruising grip as he matches Lance’s pace thrust for thrust. They move in sync, losing their pattern only once when a particularly deep thrust had Lance seeing stars, and he dropped forward, urging Keith to keep moving even as he struggled to catch his breath.

He can feel Keith’s movements stutter as he gets close. He tries to make up for the halting movement, but Keith’s hand comes away from his thigh to wrap around his neglected cock and derails his thought process entirely. Keith sits up, and Lance can’t help but whimper at the new angle.

“You’re so beautiful,” Keith kisses the underside of his jaw, hand never stopping its movement, though its more stilted trapped between their bodies. “God, Lance, I love you.”

Lance buries his hands in Keith’s hair, pulling his head back to slot their mouths together, insistent and needy as he comes in Keith’s hand. He bites at Keith’s bottom lip as he feels the telling twitch of Keith’s orgasm following a moment later.

“I love you too,” he whispers against his skin like a mantra until the tremors slow for both of them.

It takes a significant amount of self-control to move apart afterwards and clean up. Keith considers even going so far as to change the sheets until Lance pushes him, bodily, back into bed and pins him there, sprawling over top of him in a very convincing argument.

Mindlessly, Keith’s hands drag up and down Lance’s sides, fingers leaving shapeless patterns on his back as Lance watches him fight a losing battle with sleep. “Did you really ask me to hook up the first time to try and get me ‘out of your system’?”

Keith’s eyes flutter open and he tilts his chin down to meet his questioning gaze. Lance reaches up to brush hair out of his face, and Keith catches a glancing kiss against his fingers as he pulls away. He smiles softly.

“Yeah, I thought it was just like, an itch to scratch I guess.”

“Did it ever feel like it worked? Even for a minute?”

Keith doesn’t even have to think about it before he shakes his head. “I should have known you were too intoxicating. Once I was in your orbit there was no getting out, I just wanted more, as soon as we started, as soon as we were done.”

Lance hides his smile against Keith’s warm chest. “I’m glad you tried, anyways.”

Keith laughs quietly. “Me too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for reading, especially those of you who've been around from the very first one-shot, through all of my hiatuses and nonsense tumblr ramblings <3 I hope you guys enjoyed this experience as much as I have :)
> 
> (I own the shirt Keith borrows from Adam and I've wanted to put one of the vld characters in it for ages but I can't draw so this is the next best thing for me (〃￣ω￣〃)ゞ )

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to come yell at me, request new things, or just stalk the progress of other fics on [tumblr](http://thathopelessromantic.tumblr.com/) or [twitter](https://twitter.com/wonder_romantic?lang=en)!
> 
> Thanks so much for reading! :)


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